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Archives for November 2015

Vietnam’s new Health Insurance program works for Children under 6

November 26, 2015 by Rafia Zafar

RafiaZafar

In a study just published in Social Science & Medicine, a research team led by Michael Palmer at the University of Melbourne and including Fordham’s Dr. Sophie Mitra and Daniel Mont and Nora Groce both of University College London evaluates the impact of a health insurance program targeted at children under age six in Vietnam.

Capture2UNICEF Vietnam: A child at health care centre A child is weighed at the Binh Thanh Trung Health Centre in Dong Thap, Vietnam. © UNICEF Viet Nam\2011\Dominic Blewett

Public health insurance programs are growing popular in low and middle-income countries. In general, their aim is to enhance financial protection and equity related to health care. Health insurance programs targeted at children are not very common and it is important to evaluate their impacts. If they improve the health of children, such programs could have lifelong benefits in terms of improved wellbeing and productivity. These programs are smaller than universal health insurance programs (for the entire population) and may be more feasible to adopt as countries try to expand health insurance coverage.

Countries such as the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam have introduced child-targeted health insurance programs. Vietnam’s public health insurance program has a long history dating back to 1986. Its program targeted at children under age six was implemented in 2005. This paper evaluates the impact of this program on children’s health care utilization (total, public and private services) and on health expenditures at the household level.

The authors use a sample of children from three cross-sections of the Vietnam Household Living Standard Survey (2006, 2008 and 2010). This paper overcomes some estimation problems and biases found in previous studies. The authors apply a fuzzy Regression Discontinuity (RD) design to a large unrestricted sample of children, which helps address heterogeneity.

Results show that the child health insurance program for children under age six increases the probability of inpatient visits by 6.8% and of outpatient visits by 21.7%. This is illustrated in the Figure 1 below, with a higher predicted probability of inpatient or outpatient visit for children under age six. The impact of insurance on health expenditures is not statistically significant, which suggests that the policy was not successful at significantly providing financial protection.

Capture3

The authors do not find any evidence of substitution of public for private health care, which suggests that barriers to entry exist at covered public care facilities. This could be due to a variety of factors, including long queues and lack of trust in public health care. Results for substitution effect point out the significance of engaging the private sector, as it is major source of health care in Vietnam as well as in many African and Asian countries. Possible reforms include scaling up efforts to register of private health care providers into the health insurance system and the improvement of standards (both administrative and health care) of the public health care system.

Overall, the results of this paper suggest that in Vietnam, the child health insurance program for children under age six was successful at improving children’s health care access for both inpatient and outpatient services. This evidence is significant for policy makers in other LMIC’s.

References

Palmer, Michael and Mitra, Sophie and Mont, Daniel and Groce, Nora, The Impact of Health Insurance for Children Under Age 6 in Vietnam: A Regression Discontinuity Approach (October 20, 2014). Palmer, M., Mitra, S. et al., The impact of health insurance for children under age 6 in Vietnam: A regression discontinuity approach, Social Science & Medicine (2014), Forthcoming. Available at
http://ssrn.com/abstract=2512608 or http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2512608

Filed Under: Posts, Research

Congratulations to our Fordham PhDs

November 24, 2015 by Darryl McLeod

Juan Guerra Salas: Senior Economist, Central Bank of Chile
Brandon Pecarro: Congressional Research Service
Brandon Vick: University of Indiana in Pennsylvania
Yumna Omar: UNDP
Helena Keefe: Fairfield University
Michael Gallagher: Saint Bonaventure University
Rossen Trendailov: St. Thomas Acquinas College
Michael Mebane: MSCI*

*A high profile emerging markets consulting firm in
New York (see careers.msci.com)

Previous International Development Placements

Marcelo L Fluer: United Nations ECLA and DESA
Elitza Mileva: Economist, World Bank Indonesia
Maria Davalos: Senior Economist, World Bank
Peter Jacobs: Human Sciences Research Council, South Africa
Samir Gadio: Head of Africa Strategy, Standard Bank

Filed Under: Posts, Research

Anticipated Disinflation and Recession in the New Keynesian Model under Learning

November 24, 2015 by Darryl McLeod

Capture

Speaker:Bart Moore

Time: Tuesday, December 1, 4-5:15 pm

Place: Economics Conference Room, Dealy Hall, E-530

Title: Anticipated Disinflation and Recession in the New Keynesian Model under Learning

Filed Under: Events, Posts

Spotlight on: David Buchanan

November 15, 2015 by Darryl McLeod

             Last month, FCRH Class of 2015 graduate David Buchanan presented his undergraduate Economics thesis at the 68th Annual New York State Economics Association (NYSEA) Conference.  His paper “The Fallen Fruit: Evaluating Structural Adjustment and the Jamaican Banana Industry” was one of eight undergraduate submissions to be accepted for presentation on October 10, 2015 at Siena College.
            David’s research focuses on the structural adjustment program implemented in Jamaica by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank during the nation’s tumultuous economic period of the 1980s.  He utilizes both policy and trend regression analyses to evaluate the impact of the structural adjustment program on Jamaica’s banana industry.
            The banana, formerly one of Jamaica’s most important export commodities accounting for nearly twenty-five percent of the island’s export trade, is now no longer one of their top twenty agricultural exports.  Most scholarship on Jamaica’s agricultural industry pinpoints the end of preferential trade agreements as the ultimate downfall of the banana, but David believes that these studies neglect to examine the full effect of structural adjustment and this gap in the literature became the impetus of his research.
Jamaica_Bananas
            Throughout his senior year, Associate Professor Sophie Mitra guided David’s work and encouraged him to submit his paper to the NYSEA.  Based on the feedback David received from his discussant at the conference, he intends to continue working on the paper with Professor Mitra in pursuit of publication.  Congratulations to David Buchanan and Sophie Mitra on this achievement!

 

Filed Under: Posts, Research

Unraveling the effect of targeted input subsidies on household consumption and child nutrition: the case of Malawi

November 7, 2015 by Darryl McLeod

Speaker:Aurelie Harou

Time: Tuesday, November 17, 4-5:15 pm

Place: Economics Conference Room, Dealy Hall, E-530

Title: Unraveling the effect of targeted input subsidies on household

consumption and child nutrition: the case of Malawi

Filed Under: Events, Posts

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